Duck Dynasty Cake – How To

There’s a craze of love for beards sweeping the nation and after watching Duck Dynasty, I totally get it. Our family loves to watch the guys (and girls) on Duck Dynasty with their antics. With the season premier coming this week, what else do you need but a Duck Dynasty Cake of Phil Robertson to truly celebrate yuppie style?

I cannot tell you how to hunt (thank goodness) or how to blow a duck call (even better) but I can tell you how to make an easy cake that kinda looks like a Duck Dynasty guy and is easy for anyone to make.

To make this cake you will need;

Two baked cake rounds.

Crusting buttercream – not canned frosting.

Food gel colors – green, brown, black, red, and yellow.

Piping bag or ziplock with corner barely cut off.

Small amount of fondant

vodka or lemon extract

Food safe paintbrush

First let me tell you how to make the cake board (the board that you serve the cake on). I simply took my large rectangular baking stone and wrapped one of my husband’s camo Tshirts around it and taped it underneath the stone to hold it on. To make it food safe and to protect the shirt I then wrapped it in several layers of clear plastic wrap. Now the shirt won’t get messy and you have a great, food safe camo presentation.

Start with the two round cakes. Place one barely on top of the other and use it as a template to carve out a small part of the bottom cake so they will fit together and lay flat like the very first picture.

Now the cake on top will be the head and the one on bottom will be the beard. Cut the left and right edge off of the top cake so the face isn’t too round. Reserve a part removed cake piece to make a nose.

Make the frosting if you haven’t already. You do need homemade crusting buttercream. A crusting buttercream is one that gets slightly hard when it’s been setting up for awhile. You need this type of buttercream because it’s easier to work with and you can get the face a lot smoother.

Now you need to tint a small portion of the icing to a skin coloring. I found that it works best when you use a tiny dab of red food coloring and a slightly larger dab of yellow food coloring and mix well. Then slowly add brown food gel coloring until It’s the shade you want.

In the picture you can see how I’ve added a triangle for the nose.

Crumb coat the nose. Crumb coating basically means covering it with a thin coat of crusting buttercream. You do this when you’re using any cut piece of cake to lock in the crumbs. You really need to wait 10-15 minutes for the icing to harden. If you are in a rush and skip this step, you will have a lot of crumbs in your icing later on, which you will see in some of my pictures. Clumsy Crafter… not put together and definitely not perfectly planned crafter.

Once the crumb coat has set ice the rest of the face / mouth area. You need to get it smooth but the great news is since you’re using crusting buttercream, you don’t have to get it perfect! I’ll show you why in a minute.

With the rest of the icing, haphazardly mix in some black gel food coloring but don’t mix it too much. Ice the rest of the free space sparingly with this icing. You’re just making a background in case you have any open spaces in the beard that you can see through to the cake.

I forgot to take a picture of the next step but either using your icing bag or zipblock, make vertical lines going down the top of the beard area to the bottom. They can be sloppy because you’re going to destroy them a little bit more.

Now using a fork, drag it down through the icing to make the scraggly beard that the Duck Dynasty guys are famous for. Repeat this step to also make a mustache, hair on the top of the head and hair going down the sides of the face.

Now the face icing should be hardening up and ready to be smoothed some more.

To get the icing really smooth, fold a paper towel into a U shape and use the bottom side to gently blot the icing. It should easily smooth out. Do this to all the icing on the face area (not the beard, mustache, or hair).

Now you’re almost done!

Roll out the fondant to a thin layer. Don’t make it too thin but it should be less than 1/4 of an inch. Use your cake pan as a guide for size, cut out sunglasses and a band using a knife. Make it similar to the shapes you see above. It does not have to be perfect.

Now you’re going to paint the fondant using the food coloring and vodka or lemon extract.

Mix a little bit of the food gel colors and extract / vodka. Now paint right onto the fondant. The band should be a mix of green and brown while the sunglasses need to be all black.

Once you’re done, lay your glasses on the cake in the correct location and then lay the band on the cake’s forehead. Cut off the edges of the fondant that you don’t need.

Guess what? Now You’re done!

Now sit back in your subdivision and eat your cake. You’ll be Happy, Happy, Happy.

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